Tag: Dynamics CRM 2016

Microsoft added with Service Pack 1 a new function called “CalculateRollupField” in Dynamics CRM (v 8.1) which enables us to recalculate a rollup field on demand.
I will show you here how you can use it in Javascript with a http request against the WebApi.

The CalculateRollupField function inside the webrequest needs a few parameter to know which rollup field you want to to calulate:

With Dynamics CRM 2015 Update 1 Microsoft introduced the possibility to create own themes. In this post I won’t show you default settings and screenshots of unicorn colored CRM systems, I will show you the hidden setting for the CRM background color.

When you query the properties of a theme you will discover a setting that isn’t visible on the theme record (the highlighted line).
Please spare yourself the trail to customize the theme formular, it is not possible.

JavaScript

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{

"name":"CRM Default Theme",

"isdefaulttheme":false,

"logotooltip":"Microsoft Dynamics 365",

"_logoid_value":null,

"navbarbackgroundcolor":"#000000",

"navbarshelfcolor":"#DFE2E8",

"headercolor":"#1160B7",

"globallinkcolor":"#1160B7",

"selectedlinkeffect":"#B1D6F0",

"hoverlinkeffect":"#D7EBF9",

"processcontrolcolor":"#D24726",

"defaultentitycolor":"#001CA5",

"defaultcustomentitycolor":"#006551",

"controlborder":"#CCCCCC",

"controlshade":"#F3F1F1",

"backgroundcolor":"#FFFFFF",

}

So I had the idea to update the value directly through a web service call and it works.
After publishing the theme, I had a new CRM background color.

What you need to know is that Microsoft changes value back to the original CRM background color (#FFFFFF), every time you save the record through th UI.

The CRM background color bookmarklet

Since I’m a lazy guy who likes it when things are reusable, I’ve created the following bookmarklet.

With the bookmarklet your process to change the CRM background color is:

Open your theme record

Make your customizations

Save the theme

Use the bookmarklet

Publish your theme

I’m not sure if Microsoft will support it.From a technical point of view is it only an update of a record through the webservice. Considered a manufacturers point of view, they don’t want that we can change it – otherwise we had probably an option for it in the UI.

Happy styling!

Paul has cleared up the situation in the comments. In fact it is unsupported and will probably break the forms that come with CRM 9.0 in the next release.

Last week I got an error during a solution export, but the error message wasn’t very helpfull. I then had the idea to export the solution via Javascript with the hope to get an more meanfull error.
Fortunately it was so and by the way I’ve learned how to export a solution via Javascript.

Imagine an usecase where you can dynamically load a Javascript from the CRM webresources because it doesn’t need to be loaded on every single form load. Perhaps a polyfill to add missing browser functions or a Javascript library like jQuery. Here it is…

JavaScript

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functionloadJavascriptFromWebresource(strWebresourceName,async)

{

//sync or async (default)

if(async==undefined){varasync=true;}

//build a new webrequest to get the content of the webresource by its name

My personal usecase was to add a promises polyfill to the Internet Explorer. So, if you combine this post, my post about “Internet Explorer and promises” and you have a promises polyfill in your CRM webresources, you can use promises and do only load the polyfill in case the browser doesn’t support it.

Just as a little hint for the community because it took me two hours to find the resolution.
Editable subgrids wan’t be rendered with the legacy form rendering engine. It will show the normal read-only subgrid instead.

After an update to Dynamics CRM 8.1.0.359 it happens that the “From” field of the email entity is permanently disabled / locked on all forms, even in the workflow-editor.
It seems as the updates deletes a part of the fieldsettings. But you can easily restore the settings.

Create a new solution with the “From” field of the email entity in it.

You all know the most common usage of the pipelinephase field of an opportunity. It’s the sales funnel chart in sales dashboards.
By default the pipelinephase field is filled with the number of the current business process, followed by its name. But sometimes it stays empty. You can imagine how unhappy the sales guys are about that.

What I found out

It depends on how you create the opportunity. If you create an opportunity through the quickcreate feature, where it does not matter if you use the global “+” sign or the contextual “+” sign of a subgrid to create it, the pipelinephase field will not be filled until you step further in the next phase.

Workaround

Build an asynchronous workflow on opportunities that is triggered on create and fills the pipelinephase field if it is empty.

Below you find a solution to download that contains this workflow. It takes dynamically the phase name of the current business process. It is also an ondemand workflow, so that you can run from a view or advanced find that shows you all open opportunities with an empty pipelinephase field.

Issue reporting

There is already an proposal on CRM-Ideas for this issue. You can find it H E R E. It is already 9 month old and has only 4 votes. My appeal to you, follow the link, sign in and vote for it. The more votes it get, the higher is the attention from Microsoft.

Have you ever asked how many characters you can pass as parameter to a Javascript event handler or to a HTML webresource? I do, because I like to give a consultant or the customer the possibility to pass dynamic values in form of JSON objects or even whole functions without touching my code.

HTML webresource

The limit here is at 1.500 characters.

Javascript event handler

I think there no limit. Really. I made a test with up to 2.400.000 characters without any problems. The only thing that I would mention – do not exaggerate it as I did, because the performance suffers quite a lot.

Detection

As you don’t want to add and load superfluous libraries, you have to detect if the browser has promises implemented. In my first approach I used modernizr. 2KB more just for detection. That is not what I wanted and searched for a plain js solution and found it at stackoverflow.

Agony of choice

Now that we can detect if the browser has implemented promises or not, which polyfill or library should we implement additional? My decision fellt on the smallest possible solution I found – ‘ES6 Promise polyfill’ with only 2KB.

Today I stumbled over the meaning and purpose of the “ImportSequenceNumber” field in Dynamics 365 (or Dynamics CRM, If you have not got used to it like me).

The ImportSequenceNumber field itself

It’s an integer field that is reachable through the field list in a solution. It is searchable but you are not able to add it to a form.

ImportSequenceNumber purpose

Every import in Dynamics 365 is numbered with an ascending number which is globally stored in the “Organization.CurrentImportSequenceNumber” attribute. Every record created during an import gets this number as value for the ImportSequenceNumber field.
By this way Dynamics 365 can show you all records that are created during an specific import or let you delete all records created by an import.